"That chaste copier of nature, Ben Johnson, the comedian, for above forty years, gave a true picture of an arch clown in the Grave-digger. His jokes and repartees had a strong effect from his seeming insensibility of their force. His large, speaking, blue eyes he fixed steadily on the person to whom he spoke, and was never known to have wandered from the stage to any part of the theatre."—"Dram. Misc.," iii. 140.
William Bullock.
This excellent actor came to London, as we see, about 1695, deriving his engagement from the distress in which Drury-lane theatre was involved by the desertion of Betterton, and other principal performers. He quitted this establishment in 1714, owing, as Mr. Cibber insinuates, to the ungovernable temper of Wilks; and passed over to John Rich, at the opening of Lincoln's-inn-fields. He is first mentioned by Downes, for the Host, in Shakspeare's "Merry Wives of Windsor" [about 1704 or 1705], and appears to be pointed at in Dennis's "Epistle Dedicatory" to the "Comical Gallant," where the irascible writer thus addresses the Hon. George Granville:—
"Falstaff's part, which you know to be the principal one of the play, and that which on all the rest depends, was by no means acted to the satisfaction of the audience, upon which several fell from disliking the action, to disapproving the play." [As noted before, p. 252, Bullock was probably not the actor aimed at.]
This piece was printed in 1702, as acted "at the Theatre Royal in Drury-lane;" with a list of the dramatis personæ, but the names of the actors not annexed. Bullock, however, sustained the part of Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, in Vanbrugh's "Relapse," which had been previously performed under the same auspices, and from its nature, most probably by the same actor.
William Bullock was a comedian of great glee and much vivacity, and in his person large, with a lively countenance, full of humourous information. Steele, in the "Tatler," with his usual kind sensibility, very often adverts to Bullock's faculty of exciting amusement, but sometimes censures his habit of interpolation.[255] In Gildon's "Comparison between the Two Stages," 1702 [p. 199], he is termed the "best comedian since Nokes and Leigh, and a fellow that has a very humble opinion of himself." Bullock's abilities have been ratified by the sanction of Macklin, who denominated him a true theatrical genius; and Mr. Davies saw him act several parts with great applause, and particularly the Spanish Friar, when beyond the age of eighty. He died on the 18th of June, 1733. [Genest, iii. 593, points out that Bullock was acting in 1739.]
John Mills.
Our first notice of this actor is found in the "Roscius Anglicanus," where Downes, who seems anxious to dispatch his subject, says summarily that "he excels in tragedy," but without making the remotest allusion to any characters in which his talent had been displayed.
John Mills the elder was, in person, inclined to the athletic size; his features were large, though not expressive; his voice was full, but not flexible; and his deportment was manly, without being graceful or majestic. He was considered one of the most useful actors that ever served in a theatre, but though invested by the patronage of Wilks with many parts of the highest order, he had no pretensions to quit the secondary line in which he ought to have been placed. Steele[256] taxes him very broadly with a want of "sentiment," and insinuates that by making gesture too much his study, he neglected the better attributes of his art.
On the death of Betterton, or soon after, Wilks, who took upon himself to regulate the theatrical cast, gave Macbeth, with great partiality, to Mills, while Booth and Powell were condemned to represent the inferior parts of Banquo and Lenox. Mills, though he spoke the celebrated soliloquy on time,—